Dinner! 2012

[patrickamory]

Runner cannellinis over white rice.

[David Ross]

When I was a kid, Mother sometimes made breakfast for dinner. Tonight I had breakfast for dinner, but it sure wasn't like what Mother made--it was better! Tonight was the third hash I've made in the past week for the Hash Cook-Off here.

Smoked Salmon Hash with Yogurt Dill Sauce and Pickled Ginger-

[C. sapidus]

Simple meal again tonight - pork fried rice for two. Sliced pork loin, marinated and seared. Leftover jasmine rice stir-fried with ginger, shallots, roasted chile paste, fish sauce, eggs, and scallions. Eternal cucumbers, tomatoes, and limes alongside.

[Kim Shook]

Paul – your gnocchi is (are?) lovely and the sauce sounds incredible.

FrogPrincesse – your ‘pedestrian’ steak looks delectable!

Bruce – your Sichuan chicken looks so delicious! I want to try it, but I’ll have to leave out the Sichuan peppercorns. I know…hardly Sichuan without the peppercorns, but I am just a big sissy !

Stash – gorgeous pasta! I’m getting closer and closer to buying a pasta machine. I have a couple of gift cards for WS and Sur la Table and we were window shopping them at the mall last night. Every time I see one of your beautiful pasta dishes, I get even closer! How were the parsnips in that dish? I actually do like them, but I can’t imagine the texture of them with pasta.

Donna – I love your leftover frittata. I wish I were better at repurposing leftovers. I just never seem to get inspired when I look at all the dabs of this and that in the fridge.

Franci – your scallion pancakes look perfect. They ARE perfectly addictive. I could make a meal of them.

Dinner tonight was Irish Stew from a recipe in a Penzey’s catalog:

Don’t know what made it Irish other than using stout, but it was good. I ended up adding some Bisto to thicken and Kitchen Bouquet to make it darker (I never think that pallid stew looks very appetizing).

Also roasted asparagus and rolls:

[Keith_W]

Here are some action pics from tonight. Everyone whom I invited have day jobs, making a mid-week dinner difficult.

Valentine's Borscht Consomme. A normal Borscht has all the veggies boiled in the soup. I boiled the soup, removed the veggies, clarified the broth, and added fresh veggies, all cooked to highlight a different range of textures. Here we have baked beetroot (1 hour), steamed carrots (4 minutes), steamed beans (2 minutes), and raw radish and capsicum. All have been cut into heart shapes. The beans were tied together with steamed chives.

This is what it looked like after the beetroot consomme broth was added.

Main was confit duck with saffron rice. A friend took a picture of me prepping the dish.

Confit duck leg, deep fried, with saffron rice, raspberry, and baby vegetables.

Dessert was Heston Blumenthal's "Exploding Chocolate Cake" with passionfruit. Instead of his chocolate floccage, I made a white chocolate ganache and decorated it with white chocolate hearts stained pink with food colouring

[ScottyBoy]

Jeebus, that soup is incredible.

[Dejah]

Gorgeous, Keith!

Such talent presented here by all of you!

Mouth watering beyond control...

[ddelima]

Momofuku Pulled Pork w/ Mustard Barbecue Sauce and Potato Salad

[ScottyBoy]

That pulled pork recipe in ramen is great.

[gfweb]

Daughter home from college and I made one of her favorites, Italian sausage with pepper/onion/tomato and ziti, and fresh baked Italian bread.

[ddelima]

That pulled pork recipe in ramen is great.

That sounds good... I will have to try it.

[Paul Bacino]

So.. I decided to do a Pimenton ( Sweet and Smoky ) Infusion on a sous vide egg.

My finished dish.. a take on Bacon and Eggs!! I have a ancho/ gauva sauce too added.

Red Wattle Ham steak with Pimenton infused Sous Vide Egg (146 for 1hr )

[Prawncrackers]

Inspired by Sheepish's blog this week I pulled out a shoulder mutton from the freezer for a traditional Sunday roast. I rubbed it down with a mix of oil, garlic, cumin, thyme, oregano and lemon zest and left it overnight. It was slow roasted for 5 hrs today till the meat was tender. We had a Kenyan friend round who is a big meat-eater and between the three of we managed to eat it all up! It was good, really good. We had duck fat roasties, brocolli, glazed carrots and a big bowl of salsa verde. As it was our friends birthday I also baked him a birthday cheesecake:

Last week I cooked a Roast Chicken the Heston Blumenthal way. I roasted it at around 95-100C till the thickest part of the breast was 65C. He recommends cooking till 60C but I'm glad I took it a little further, the legs were just cooked but still looked quite pink. I shudder to think what they would have been like had I followed his 60C, still clucking probably. The meat was moist in that poached chicken kind of way which being Chinese suited us fine but even after the second high temp blast in the oven it really didn't have that roast chicken flavour for me. Slightly disappointed. We had cavalo nero and an inspired chicken fat mash that contained pieces of fried chicken skin. The mash I can highly recommend:

And my wife's go-to favourite meal of tonkatsu with guacamole, yum:

[patrickamory]

Pozole rojo. The corn came from Rancho Gordo.

[gfweb]

Wow. Amazing stuff Patrick, Prawn, Xi, Paul,

Kim, Keith!

Edited February 13, 2012 by gfweb (log)

[Kim Shook]

Keith_W – that is a gorgeous meal! What lucky guests. I love, love, love the heart shaped vegetables!

Prawn – we cataloged all three freezers today and I found a lamb roast of some sort and some duck fat. Slow roasted lamb and duck fat roasted potatoes are in my future. That just looks amazing! And that cheesecake!!!! Be still, my heart. That is EXACTLY how cheesecake should look! Can you hook a girl up with a recipe for that? You don’t even have to translate it from the British !

Dinner tonight was a new recipe – one that Mr. Kim and I both worked on and contributed to. Our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) group is having a Soup Swap and we wanted to bring something interesting. We hunted through all of my recipes and nothing really ‘got’ us. Mr. Kim started talking about a sausage and kale soup and I suggested adding cannellini beans and subbing escarole for kale (not a big kale fan). Mr. Kim looked around on the internet and came up with some recipes. We borrowed a lot from Giada, but made it our own with Italian sausage, potatoes and marjoram. We were really pleased with the results and with how quickly and easily this was made:

Escarole and Bean Soup w/ Italian Sausage

[heidih]

Pozole rojo. The corn came from Rancho Gordo.

Oh my! I love the traditional accompaniments that I see in the background.

[C. sapidus]

Wow, spectacular meals! I followed patrickamory down a Mexican path:

Carnitas estilo Urapan – chunks of pork butt, simmered with onion and garlic. The pork is drained when tender and then simmered again with orange juice and milk. When the liquids are fully reduced, the pork fries in its rendered lard (sorta like Mexican rendang ). This would make a killer taco filling. I added Tapatio salsa liberally after picture time.

Arroz verde con rajas – jasmine rice cooked with roasted chile Poblano strips and pureed spinach, parsley, cilantro, onion, and garlic.

Calabacitas picadas con elote – chopped zucchini and chile Poblano strips sautéed with corn, tomato, onion, garlic, and cilantro. I love feta cheese with Mexican vegetables, so I crumbled some on top.

[mgaretz]

I didn't snap any pictures, but tonight I tried an experiment. I made my regular crab cake recipes but used canned tuna instead. They came out very good and will likely become a regular around here. Served with homemade coleslaw.

[gfweb]

I do the same thing. I actually like the tuna cakes better than crab. I serve with a lime aioli and salad.

[Dejah]

My great-nephew Brendan was in town with his University of Alberta volleyball team against our guys. He asked to have supper with us, along with a friend. This was post-game, which ended up around 11:30 PM!

I did a 5.8 kg prime rib roast as he was bringing one or two team mates, both around 6'8", and eat alot.

The roast was pulled at 140 internal but tented and sat for 1.5 hours before the guys made it over. It was still quite warm but a little more done than medium. THat didn't both Brendan's teammate Kurt, who ate 4 slabs plus 5 Yorkies! Even Brendan was amazed.

Kurt with his second helping!

[Norm Matthews]

Dinner plans tonight are strip steak, baked sweet potato fries, tossed salad, steamed asparagus with alfredo sauce instead of hollandaise and garlic rolls.

[Franci]

Tonight we had veal tongue with Madera sauce. Not bad but I like it so much better with salsa verde!

[mm84321]

Bass with artichokes and chorizo.

[Norm Matthews]

There was over 2" of snow on the grill so I used the cast iron skillet on the stove inside.. smokey. Strip steak, sweet potato baked fries, salad, asparagus with alfredo.